AuthorTopic: Display Resolution DejaVu (Read 5906 times)

I've looked at a number of postings on resolution solutions, but none that would solve my particular problem. I have an elderly Compaq 5838 with a 17" Compaq MV720 monitor, that I've installed VL 6.0 Gold (Xfce) on. VL won't give me resolutions higher than 1024x768 using that monitor. The graphics card & monitor are capable of up to 1280x1024 resolutions, as they have both been run at the higher resolutions with Windows and other Linux distros. The resolution I want is 1152x864. I can get the higher resolutions (1152x864 & 1280x1024) with a 15" Gateway2000 Vivitron 1572 monitor attached, doing no more than swapping monitors (). I've tweaked xorg.conf a number of times, and reinstalled VL 4 times. The lines below from gtf, xrandr, & xorg.conf are from the most recent install. The 15" & 17" info below was taken by switching monitors and nothing else. Note that the "Modes" lines in the "Screen" section of xorg.conf specify the 1280x1024 resolution, regardless of the attached monitor. I'm sure there's some magic setting somewhere that will allow me to get the resolutions higher than 1024x768 with the 17" monitor.

After rebooting, the monitor came up in 640x480 mode (). Display Settings showed that 1024x768 was the highest resolution available, so I selected 1024x768, which X switched to immediately. After a 2nd reboot, the monitor came up in 1024x768 mode, and Display Settings still shows 1024x768 as the highest resolution available.

Which has the HorizSync, VertRefresh, & Modeline verbatim from the Ubuntu clip. Rebooted twice, and still 1024x768 is the highest resolution that I can get with the 17" monitor.

Just for the heck of it and with your suggested changes in xorg.conf, I swapped in the 15" monitor again. With the 15" monitor attached, VL came up in 1280x1024 mode. Display Settings showed 1152x864 available, so I selected 1152x864, and X immediately switched to that resolution. Swapping back to the 17" monitor resulted in returning to 1024x768 as the highest available resolution.

I replaced the Monitor and Screen sections in xorg.conf completely with the Monitor and Screen sections that you provided, shutdown and rebooted twice, and still no changes. First couple of lines from xrandr dump reveals:

How do the xorg.conf 'Monitor' sections vary from when you have the 17" compaq connected versus the 15" sony? It seems to be primarily a monitor issue and not a graphics driver issue so perhaps comparing the two will help illustrate the culprit.

With no other changes, I swapped in the 15" Gateway monitor, and the PC came up with 1280x1024 resolution. Using Display Settings, I changed the current resolution to 1152x864, so I could see what I was doing. After changing resolution, the Monitor section of xorg.conf is:

Swapping back to the 17" Compaq monitor, the PC came up with 800x600 resolution (). Display Settings indicated that resolutions up to 1024x768 were available, so I selected the Default setting (1024x768 75). After changing resolution, the monitor section of xorg.conf is:

All I can guess is that the Xserver in VL is less than the Xserver in Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS, and that the newer xserver has better support/identification for your compaq monitor - but that's a complete guess. I seems like no matter what you try X will not allow a resolution higher than what xrandr can identify as the highest supported resolution, which is mostly likely a security measure so that the user doesn't break their hardware. However, in this case it sure seems that the monitor can support higher resolutions and that you are being stiffled by xserver/xrandr. Maybe I'm on the wrong track here, I really don't know.

Hopefully someone else can pop-in with a fresh perspective. I'll certainly keep thinking on it and let you know if I come up with anything.

edit:Is there any difference if you bump the screen default depth up to 24:Screen section:

I decided to start over on the sections that pertain to the monitor. I took out everything except what was absolutely necessary to express 1152x864 resolution.

I removed the last 2 sections:

Section "DRI"Mode 0666EndSection

Section "Extensions"Option "Composite" "on"EndSection

I found something unclear about the "DRI" section in the xorg.conf man pages, and absolutely nothing about the "Extensions" section there, so I just removed them.

I got the HorizSync and VertRefresh from the MV720 spec, and I regenerated the Modeline using "gtf 1152 864 75" in a terminal session. After doing that and removing anything that didn't pertain to 1152x864, I was left with:

That got the resolution up to 1152x768. Better, but not what I wanted. Just on a hunch, using "gtf 1152 864 60" from a terminal session, I regenerated the "Modeline" for a refresh rate of 60 instead of 75 resulting in: